Review: Lucifer Book 3

Lucifer Book 3 resolves the story of what happened in hell after Lucifer abandoned it. We get a glimpse of hell, as well as Lucifer's plan to survive his duel with the angel. At no point do you ever feel like Lucifer is in any danger. The graphic novel is more about how he's going to get there.

After that, we get a resolution of the story of Elaine Belloc's 'soul and the recovery thereof.

The entire story was pretty lackluster. I stopped reading book 4 and never got around to writing this review until I realized that my library book had come due.

In Memoriam: Sweesam Na 1942-2017

My father was born in Gerisek, Malaysia, a kampong (village). He was in a family of 7, and his own father died while he was very young. Stories from that period was that he was so poor he and his brothers shared a pair of shorts. When the older brother met the younger brother on the way home, he'd take off his shorts and give it to the younger sibling to wear to school.

Moving to Singapore in his 20s, he had 3 sons and went from being a laborer to a driver to running his own business. With that, he supported 3 sons. He didn't enjoy being in the US when we immigrated. But he still moved here after he retired to be with his grandkids.

The last few years have been challenging. He survived 2 strokes (both of which were caused by falls), but despite that learned to Snorkel at age 72, and just a few years ago was still carrying Bowen around in a baby carrier.


When I arrived at the house on Sunday, I heard my cousin's littlest baby crying, and so thought everything was going as usual. Then my mom told me that he's choking. My two cousins held him up while I grabbed his belly and heaved. I did so repeatedly and saw something on the floor but nothing more came out. We called 911, and when they arrived I had to lie down because I was exhausted.

They had to lever out the food and used an AED. By the time he hit the ER there'd been irreparable damage because of a heart attack. The ER doctor told us that our dad was dying, and that if it was his parent he would not go for heroic measures to keep him alive as he would never be able to breathe without a ventilator again.

We took him off the ventilator at noon on February 2/27/2017. He passed away at 4:10pm. He is survived by 1 brother, 2 sisters, his wife, 3 sons, 2 grandsons, and 1 grand daughter.

Review: Nemesis Games

Nemesis Games is the 5th book in the Expanse series. It's the first novel in the series that doesn't standalone. You could presumably read any of the previous novels without any of the preceding ones, but this novel would simply have not much impact (or even make much sense) without the context of the preceding novels. Furthermore, the novel doesn't even resolve the situations it sets up, ending on a cliff-hanger for the next novel!

Having said that, this is the first novel that I feels fulfills the promises the authors (yes, James Corey is a pen-name for two authors) made at the start of the series, which is that the Expanse is ultimately the story of humanity's expansion from the solar system to the rest of the galaxy.

The previous novels set the stage: a star gate has opened up to the rest of the galaxy, and the mad land-rush has begun. The barriers to humanity's expansions have fallen, and the alien menace that wiped out the civilization which created the star gate is nowhere to be seen.

With all that in place, of course, humanity will find a way to screw it up and make a mess of things. The crew of the Rocinante has about 6 months to wait for their ship to be repaired and restored, and so each of them (except Holden) outsource the repair job and head out to reconnect with their respective pasts. This is a welcome break, since we've never actually gotten actual character development with everyone other than Holden in previous novels, and the authors take their time to give us a detailed glimpse.

Of course, when all hell breaks loose the crew comes together, but only just in time to set up for the inevitable 6th book in the series.

As far as novels are concerned, it's the first novel in the series that I would consider recommended. Unfortunately, you pretty much have to read all the previous novels to make sense of it.

Review: Pediatrics Grand Rounds (Medical School for Everyone Series)

Parenting books are mostly extremely badly written. But Dr. Roy Benaroch is a real doctor (a practicing pediatrician) and I enjoyed the Emergency Medicine audio lectures so much that I thought this would be a hoot.

Nearly every lecture in this 24 lecture series made me wish I'd audited this series before I became a parent. It answers so many great questions that I'd had and does so in practical, case-study type format that treats each patient complaint as a mystery, some with serious implications and some without:

• How does sleep training work, and how quickly can you do it? (it's turns out the cry it out methods are faster than the alternatives)
• Why are vaccine schedules set the way they are? (turns out that this is driven by medical studies and periods of vulnerability)
• What serious birth defects do existing prenatal screens detect, and which types slip through? 
• Why is folic acid important?
• What's the best way to discipline your kid? How do you properly do a time-out? (It turns out consistency and immediacy is key --- if you can't impose the punishment immediately, it's better to ignore it than to mention it and not follow through)
• Cancer is the leading cause of deaths among children between 1 and 9, but leukemia is surprisingly treatable (80% survival rate).

One might think that listening to this series would cause you to become paranoid and hypochondriac, but in my case I just felt very grateful that all our visits to the hospitals and clinics have been relatively complication free.

This is not to say all the case studies in the series have happy endings. Some of them don't, and one of the episodes might be very distressing if you're sensitive. Dr. Benaroch is very careful in calling it out in case you want to just skip that episode, so I wouldn't let that deter you from listening to the series.

Unlike Emergency Medicine, I didn't manage to get any of the diagnosis correct on the case studies (except 1), so that meant the series taught me something new in every episode!

Highly recommended. And if you're a new parent, contains valuable information about how to interact with your physician and how to make the best use of your time.

Review: Your Best Brain - The Science of Brain Development

I'm a sucker for anything by John Medina, so when I saw that he actually had a Great Courses program called Your Best Brain, I picked it up hoping that it wouldn't be too much of a repeat from say, Brain Rules for Baby.

It turns out not to overlap with the book very much at all, which is great! The major thesis of the program is that your brain is a physical object, and therefore is subject to all the laws of physics and chemistry, along with the rules set by evolution. The net result is that a lot of the times, Medina explains something through the thought experiment of thinking about what man's ancient ancestors on the plains of the Serengeti had to face, and what problems the brain evolved to solve.

The coverage then starts from Neurons and Dendrites, and then moves on to the major areas of the brain. Each lecture ends with practical tips on how to optimize your brain. Most of them are no brainers, like: "get enough sleep! Just a few hours of sleep debt is enough to make you behave like you're drunk!"

Other interesting tips:

• If you need to learn something for a test, try to do the learning in an environment as similar to test conditions as possible.
• Memories work best via repetition, but not cramming. And all nighters (as you would expect from the above) are a no-no.
• Classic teenage rebellious behavior is a Western phenomenon. In most non-Western cultures, you do not get teenage rebellious behavior unless/until the kids in those cultures have been exposed to western media.
• Elizabeth Kuber-Ross's ideas about the stages of grief ("denial//anger/bargaining/depression/acceptance") is BS. For most humans, the response to grief is resilience.
• Get 150 minutes of aerobic activity a week to optimize brain function. Yes, that means Garmin's Vivoactive HR's "intensity minutes" approach is completely correct.

All in all, the course is great, and I can recommend it. Well worth the time.

Review: Lucifer Book 2

In the previous book, Lucifer managed to create an entire new multi-verse out of the current Cosmos. In Lucifer Book 2, the repercussions of it are brought forward as folks race towards the new multiverse to establish a foothold. In this book, Mike Carey reveals that yes, the DC Cosmology is entirely Judeo-Christian based, with the name of the universe's creator being Yahweh.

And this isn't the God of the New Testament, this is the God of the Old Testament. Jealous, petty, and probably appropriate for the age of Trump as president. Not only does he view Lucifer as the adversary, he views disobedience as reason to punish innocents as well as the guilty. We never do get to see Yahweh's face.

There are a few side stories in the book about the new world Lucifer's created, some of which are actually very well done (involving time differentials between the two cosmologies). Lucifer's still a sympathetic character, but it's also very clear that he's entirely self-centered, willing to sacrifice others to achieve his aims.

Comic books are fast, easy reads. This one was available easily on Hoopla. Otherwise I probably wouldn't have bothered making a trip to the library to pick it up. I'm not in a hurry to keep reading on to the rest of the series, however.

Review: Cibola Burn

Cibola Burn is the 4th Expanse novel. In the third novel, James Holden manages to open up the star gate through which other systems can be accessed, and of course, true to American Frontier form, squatters from the outer asteroids immediately zoom through the gate in order to claim land and territory. An official UN science expedition arrives months later, and the squatters resent the presence of official authority enough to start a pre-emptive attack.

Of course, any human venture into a new frontier would result in massive chaos, huge amounts of selfishness, and eventually our protagonist Jim Holden is asked to show up and mediate between the two sides. Events escalate from there and he and his crew have to deal with the planet trying to kill them, the two sides trying to kill each other, and the mystery that's in Holden's head trying to get him to do what it wants him to do.

From the overall arc of the novel series perspective, the meta-plot and story is advancing at a glacier pace. The novel itself sets up tense situations, but shies away from actually resolving them in a realistic fashion --- the authors treat each scene like a cliff-hanger in which the crew of the Rocinante is expected to survive, thereby draining tension from the novel. There's relatively little character development, and the main villain is horribly unrealistic.

Not recommended.

Review: How to Listen to and Understand Great Music, 3rd Edition

How to Listen to and Understand Great Music is misnamed. It really should be labeled: The structure and form of Western Music. I don't really fault Professor Greenberg for this: it's quite clear to him that "Great Music" is restricted to those composed by Dead White People. I'll admit to mostly being a music philistine: I hated my piano lessons as a kid, and rarely understood the point of Mozart. I labelled all instrumental-only music as "classical".

Well, Professor Greenberg taught me a lot:

• "Classical" music is actually a misnomer. There's "Baroque", "Classical", "Romanticism", and "Modernism." These labels apply to various epochs roughly corresponding to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Debussy. Each of these epochs had unique characteristics that were reflected in the music. I was actually surprised that I could learn this because at one point during the program Greenberg played a piece of music and asked the listener to guess what epoch it came from and I actually got it right.
• Beethoven really does sound different from any composers before him. His music, unlike that which came before, actually does represent extra-musical content. I tested this by playing a Beethoven symphony to Bowen, who did promptly ask: "What does this music mean?" Which is not a question that usually comes up with other instrumental music.
• Professor Greenberg is a fan of Opera. Despite his immense enthusiasm, I still can't stand it. Despite his picking what he thinks are great musical pieces to listen to, I'm afraid I agree with one of the characters in John Steakley's fabulous novel: "Opera is for vampires. The living prefer rock and roll."
• Life during the middle ages was tough. One of the composers had 20 children, out of which only 2 survived to adult hood. Many of them died young (Mozart at 35), and even when they were alive had poor health and frequently the medical care hurt them. Greenberg did not shy from providing excellent coverage of the composers' lives, which made them far more interesting as people than I would have thought.
• The piano technology got hugely better from the 1600s to the 1800s. That's why in Mozart's symphonies, whenever the piano played the rest of the orchestra had to pipe down: the piano simply wasn't loud enough to compete with the other instruments in the orchestra. By the time you got to the 1800s the concert grand could hold its own against the orchestra and the symphonies written then didn't have to pipe down the rest of the orchestra as much. I wished Greenberg covered more of this since it would have been interesting to see what other technological changes in instruments affected composition.
• Dance music (waltzes, etc) is not considered "Great Music", so I don't ever have to listen to them even if I was a music snob.

Conclusions that Greenberg didn't mention but that I drew for myself:

• The various forms of music (e.g., Sonata Form) were really designed for music that was written in a pre-recorded era. That's why, for instance, Sonata Expositions frequently feature repeats of the themes. In a pre-recording era, you weren't going to listen to a piece of music repeatedly on demand, so each musical piece would have to repeat its themes during the exposition so the audience could hold it in their heads. This practice doesn't stand up in recorded music, since if you were to listen to the pieces repeatedly (e.g., if you listened to any of the numbered symphonies more than once a week), the expositions quickly become boring and feels like the composer's condescending to your intelligence. Greenberg vehemently demands that repeats be played exactly as written (and there's definitely a purist approach where that's correct), but I can definitely see why these already long pieces can't compete with shorter musical forms (e.g., Rock & Roll), which evolved in an era where recorded music that can be (re)played on-demand is the norm.
• Classical music was used as the catch-all for Western instrumental music forms because it was the pop music of the day. The middle class was starting to happen, which meant that regular people could become amateur musicians and learn to play well enough to demand easy-listening pieces.
• The need to express individuality and originality drove composers from Beethoven onwards to slowly abandon the traditional forms of instrumental music. What makes most modern instrumental composers unbearable to most people (e.g., Schoenberg) was when composers completely abandoned tonality.

I learned a surprising amount over the 42-lecture listen. The biographies of Beethoven, Listz, Tchaikovsky, and other composers were fun and added a lot of life to people behind the music. There were several pieces that I'd never heard before that I made notes to hunt down to listen to, and of course, I discovered that I'm a Beethoven fan and not a Mozart fan.

Nevertheless, I'm not convinced that Great Music should be restricted to those instrumental pieces constructed in the past. Certainly for today's "repeated listening" environments, I think many popular music genres out-compete the so-called classics for good reason. Nevertheless, if you have the time, I'd definitely consider Professor Greenberg's lecture series well worth a listen.

Review: Lucifer Book 1

Lucifer is a spin-off off of Neil Gaiman's Sandman. In that book, Lucifer gives up his reign in hell and decides to retire to Earth to enjoy his days. Of course, life is never that simple, and in this volume 1 we get to see what happens when heaven comes calling and asks him to do something in exchange for a passage.

Writing Lucifer couldn't have been easy: in this incarnation he's not really evil, but he effectively has to have unlimited power in this book. As a result, author Mike Carey contrives repeatedly to put him into situations where he's not the most powerful being alive, but has to trick his way into winning (which again, is not a problem for the former Archangel).

DC Universe's cosmology is a mish-mash of everything at best, and incoherent at worse. This allows Carey to get away with all sorts of situations where he essentially gets to make up the rules as he goes along, playing with your sympathies for the devil, so to speak. You also do get to feel sympathy for his subjects and the secondary characters in the book, since the blow-back from the main plot really affects them the most.

All in all, it's entertaining enough. It doesn't quite rise to the level of the Sandman, but I'm guessing if that's your standard you should read Fables and then stop.